Morgan Stewart, (L), and Saul Wolf, (R), attorney representing the alleged victims of Kevin Kirkland speaks outside San Bernardino Superior Court, on four new lawsuits against the Redlands Unified School District for its “mishandling” of reports of sexual misconduct against the former Redlands High School teacher, Tuesday, in San Bernardino, Ca., Steptember 19, 2017. (Photo by John Valenzuela/The Sun/SCNG)

An attorney on Tuesday, Sept. 19, announced that four former students of Redlands High School special education teacher and convicted sex offender Kevin Patrick Kirkland have filed a lawsuit alleging school and district officials failed to protect them and properly address complaints of sexual misconduct.

Irvine attorney Morgan Stewart with Manly, Stewart & Finaldi said at a news conference outside the San Bernardino Justice Center in downtown San Bernardino that the lawsuit, filed Monday, also names as defendants the Redlands Unified School District, former RHS principal Christina Rivera, former school district Superintendent Lori Rhodes, and district Assistant Superintendent of Human Resources Sabine Robertson-Phillips.

The lawsuit outlines alleged sexual misconduct between Kirkland and the four alleged victims, dating as far back as 2006. Each victim, identified as Jane Does in the filing, provide similar details alleging the plaintiffs were assaulted at various times until the longtime educator’s arrest last year.

Steve Harber, legal counsel for the Redlands Unified School District, issued a statement Tuesday, saying, “This civil lawsuit, in which plaintiff seeks to recover money from the taxpayers of Redlands, makes unsubstantiated allegations based on speculation, misrepresentations, and hindsight. The plaintiffs’ lawyers try to construct a pattern of misbehavior by district employees in dealing with Mr. Kirkland that is not based on the facts available at that time.

“It is simply unfair to imply that district leaders did not take this case seriously,” Harber continued. “The facts of this case will show that the district disciplined Mr. Kirkland to the limits of our personnel policies based on what witnesses and others reported to us at the time. The appropriate place to refute these allegations is through the judicial process where disputed facts and interpretations of events can be proven, rather than in the media.”

Authorities arrested 58-year-old Kirkland in April 2016 in Arizona. He subsequently pleaded guilty in April to molesting four female Redlands High School students between May 1, 2015 and May 1, 2016. He was sentenced June 12 to two years in prison, was granted credit for time served and released from custody the same day, court records show.

San Bernardino County sheriff’s Lt. Sarkis Ohannessian said Kirkland was held at the West Valley Detention Center in Rancho Cucamonga from May 13, 2016 until June 12.

Kirkland, a former Rancho Cucamonga resident, now resides in Palm Desert, Stewart said. He called Kirkland’s conviction a “slap on the wrist,” and that all of Kirkland’s victims were special needs students and/or teacher assistants.

Kirkland could not be reached for comment Tuesday and his attorney, Sean O’Connor, did not return repeated telephone calls Monday and Tuesday seeking comment.

Authorities confirmed Tuesday that Kirkland could be looking at additional charges. Redlands Police Department spokesman Carl Baker said additional information/allegations regarding one of the victims Kirkland was convicted of molesting has been submitted to the San Bernardino County District Attorney’s Office for review.

“We cannot discuss any further details of that investigation pending the DA’s review,” Baker said in an email.

In March, Stewart filed the first civil lawsuit in the Kirkland case. The plaintiff, identified as Jane Doe, is one of the victims Kirkland was convicted of abusing, for which Kirkland may be facing additional charges, Stewart said.

The March lawsuit, amended in August, alleges the 15-year-old plaintiff was the victim of sexual abuse and harassment by Kirkland beginning in August 2013. The lawsuit alleged Kirkland preyed on vulnerable, female special needs students by going through their student files and poring over their medical and family information, as well as their history of discipline, peer issues and bullying.

After gleaning information from student files, Kirkland would approach the most vulnerable students and befriend them. He complimented them on their looks, requested their phone numbers, provided them money, and even showed them a gun he kept in his classroom, among other things. He also tried to get female students alone with him in his classroom to engage in sexual acts, and invited them to his home when his wife was away, the lawsuit alleges.

School administrators were aware of multiple allegations of sexual misconduct against Kirkland for at least 12 years, yet “intentionally and maliciously chose to leave Kirkland in his position and at school,” allowing Kirkland to sexually abuse roughly 16 female students within the school district, according to the lawsuit.

“Defendants acted with outrageous conduct, with the intent of causing harm to the students attending defendant’s school,” the lawsuit alleges.

Stewart said at Tuesday’s news conference that Kirkland would make his targeted victims “feel special and then go to the next step.” He said that next step included sexual intercourse.

Stewart said complaints went ignored by the district because it “wants to protect its image” and “protect teachers first.”

One of Kirkland’s alleged victims and plaintiffs in the lawsuit filed Monday claimed her alleged abuse began in or around 2006 and continued for four years. Another said incidents took place between 2011 and 2012. The third and fourth said the abuse began in or around 2014 through a period of 2016 and between 2015 and 2016, respectively.

According to the filing, district officials were made aware of allegations against Kirkland during his tenure as vice principal at Clement Middle School before moving to Redlands High.

The filing alleges Kirkland “sought to teach special education classes in order to ingratiate himself with those that were the most vulnerable and would not stand up to his conduct.”

He built relationships by providing various incentives, such as treats and toys, books and perfume; allowed students to use his classroom for lunch; drove students off-campus for treats; showed students the gun he kept in class; paid for sexual favors from students; shared “sexually laden texts with students asking for nude pictures of the students via text,” the filing said.

Texts ranged from inappropriate comments about a student’s body to inviting one student to join him on a trip to Palm Springs. Robertson-Phillips, Rhodes and Rivera all received copies of text messages sent by Kirkland to one student, which included “such statements as that she was ‘pretty’ that ‘all the boys liked her’ and that he ‘missed her.'” District officials did not report the texts, the suit said.

The suit says Robertson-Phillips, with permission from Rhodes and Rivera, told Kirkland to stop sending texts to students and “stop behaving inappropriately.” He was put on watch for 45 days, but his behavior did not change, the suit continued.

The filing alleges district officials and Rivera were aware of the allegations brought upon Kirkland, and in one instance, dissuaded the victim from not reporting to authorities an instance when Kirkland touched her breast.

The suit says Kirkland had a reputation as a Mormon, a father and a grandfather with a “dark side.” At RHS, Kirkland was known to “flirt, text and broach subjects with students that were sexual and inappropriate” and RHS “operated as nothing more than a grooming ground for his sexual desires.”

Students who made complaints about Kirkland were removed from his classroom, but he would continue to harass them if he saw them on campus, the filing said. Keeping him employed allowed Kirkland “the opportunity to engage in his fetishes” at school and at his home, according to the filing.

The suit claims that not only did district officials have enough evidence to report Kirkland to authorities, they also refused to cooperate with a police investigation by immediately “invoking the presence of outside counsel” and having an outside investigation firm, Nicole Miller & Associates, conduct pre-examinations of witnesses prior to interviews with authorities.

Nicole Miller & Associates’ involvement was to keep the allegations against Kirkland under wraps, the suit claims.

Stewart on Tuesday called the case “Whitehurst No. 2,” referring to former Citrus Valley High School teacher Laura Whitehurst, who was convicted of six felonies after it was revealed she had an illegal sexual relationship with a former student who fathered her child. The student’s family won a $6 million settlement against RUSD in 2016 over the district’s handling of the Whitehurst case.

Under an agreement with prosecutors, in exchange for her plea, Whitehurst was sentenced to five years of probation and up to a year in county jail, and ordered to forfeit her teaching credentials, register as a sex offender, attend sex offender treatment, wear a GPS tracking device and not make contact with the victim.

She served six months in jail due to good behavior, and now legally shares custody of the child with its father.

In the meantime, the victim pursued legal action against the school district, saying that a Redlands Unified teacher and soccer coach, along with other unidentified district officials, failed to report the abuse to authorities, as they are required by state law.

Morgan Stewart (L) and Saul Wolf (R), attorney representing the alleged victims of Kevin Kirkland speaks outside San Bernardino Superior Court, on four new lawsuits against the Redlands Unified School District for its “mishandling” of reports of sexual misconduct against the former Redlands High School teacher, Tuesday, in San Bernardino, Ca., Steptember 19, 2017. (Photo by John Valenzuela/The Sun/SCNG)

“Once again, in these new cases, history repeats itself, and we have evidence of failures to report sexual assault crimes, destruction of evidence and other facts,” Stewart said of the Kirkland case Tuesday. “Further victimizing these girls is the fact that Kevin Kirkland only served one year of a two-year sentence for his crime despite the overwhelming evidence of victims and information of Kirkland and his crimes.”

Staff writer Beau Yarbrough contributed to this report.

"He would make them feel special and then go to the next step," Stewart said. The next step included sexual intercourse.

Joe Nelson is an award-winning investigative reporter who has worked for The Sun since November 1999. He started as a crime reporter and went on to cover a variety of beats including courts and the cities of Colton, Highland and Grand Terrace. He has covered San Bernardino County since 2009. Nelson is a graduate of California State University Fullerton. In 2014, he completed a fellowship at Loyola Law School's Journalist Law School program.